Sharing The Love

Material Maidel has very kindly invited me to join her team at Kosher Cuisine. Click on over there to see my first (and may I say, brilliant) birthday party post.

On Veteran's Day

Veterans of Foreign Wars National Honor Guard wait for Veterans Day ceremony to begin earlier today at Arlington National cemetery in Virginia.
(photo from MSNBC.com)

There is no way to adequately thank the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces who safeguard our country and our liberty. We can, however, add them to our prayers in the hope that God will keep them safe and grant them success. We owe them at least that much.

Chick Clicks

A few links that may be of particular interest to the females out there (although the men are of course free to click as well):

Hadassah is having a giveaway for a free $25 box of surprise Hair Accessories from CoverYourHair.com. To enter, click on over to Hadassah's blog.
Leora has posted a list of delicious soups that you may want to try.
Conversations in Klal brings up some important things to think about before leaving your children with a babysitter.
New mom Lizrael is discovering how difficult it is to juggle her job and her baby at the same time.
Webgirl writes honestly about the pain of dealing with infertility.

Hey Lady! Keep Your Pants On!

Imagine being able to try on clothes without having to undress at all:



How much fun would that be?!

Happy Day, Sad Day

I was blessed this afternoon with a visit from my beautiful niece and her new baby boy. He's only two months old, and so sweet and happy and alert. What a pleasure it was to hold him and rock him to sleep and make funny noises at him. I even got to sing the national anthem to him (an old trick that I discovered years ago. Cranky babies find the Star Spangled Banner to be very soothing, if you sing it low and slow.) It's been so long since I've had a chance to play with a newborn. What a pleasure.

But then, after Shabbat, I got a phone call from my mother. She had flown to Los Angeles with her sister to be with their ailing brother. My mother hadn't seen her brother in a long time, and was shocked by how sick he is. The doctors have said that he has only days to live. My mother was sobbing so hard she could barely choke out the words. There was nothing I could do to help from so far away, so I just held onto the phone, listening to her cry, and crying along with her. I was touched to see my youngest daughter staring at me with tears in her eyes. I was worried about my mother, and she was worried about hers.

I pray that my uncle will recover, but I know that is just not possible anymore. So all I can do now is hope that my mother and my aunt will get through this heartbreaking time together.

And The Parent Of The Year Award Goes To...

...this guy:

Learning How To Give A D'var Torah

Last week, the Rabbi of our shul asked my son Flash to deliver a short d'var torah on the Parsha during the seudah shlishi meal. (A d'var torah is a brief explanation and analysis of a character or event in the Bible.) Flash agreed, but he was nervous about it. (Perfectly understandable, I think. It's not easy for a 15 year old boy to stand up and speak in front of his Rabbi and thirty other men.) Trying to help, I showed him Ilana-Davita's parsha post and suggested that he use the question that she raises there as a starting point for developing his own d'var torah. He liked the idea, and sat down with an open chumash to begin writing it. After just a few minutes, he began asking me for help. I realized that this child, who has spent 11 years learning in yeshiva, had no idea how to construct a two minute d'var torah on his own. I ended up walking him step by step through the process.
Then today, I see that The Rebbetzin's Husband has posted about this very topic. He observes that "...many people have difficulty with this task; their knowledge, their sense of homiletic structure, or their available time may not be up to the task". He tells us that over the years, many people have come up to him to ask for help with developing a d'var torah. I'm sure that the majority of those people were adults and not adolescent boys.
And so I have to ask: Why on earth don't the boys' yeshivahs teach their students this basic skill? There is really no excuse for a smart, well educated boy like Flash to have such difficulty composing a two minute speech about the weekly parsha on his own. I remember how nervous he felt trying to put together a d'var torah for his Bar Mitzvah two years ago. (I ended up helping him then too, of course.) At the time, I assumed that it was a normal part of the general anxiety felt by Bar Mitzvah boys everywhere. But now I see that it is simply a skill that has not been taught to him, which is really unfortunate, because it is boys like him who are or should be the future leaders of our congregations.
I think that it would be a good idea for every yeshivah to implement a program in which 7th and 8th graders are taught how to research, construct, and deliver a short d'var torah. This can be done formally or informally, as part of the preparation for their Bar Mitzvahs. This skill should be reinforced in the high schools and in our local shuls, where boys can be given occasional opportunities to deliver divrei torah on Shabbos or at special events. If we encourage our sons to snap out of "passive spectator" mode and become active contributing members of our shuls at a young age, they are more likely to stick around as they get older.

(And what about our girls, you ask? That's a topic for another day.)

Exciting and Important Activities? Yeah, Right.

Because I haven't really posted at all this month, you would think that I've been oh-so-busy with all kinds of exciting and important activities. Well, you would be wrong. I'm a 41 year old cash-deprived mother with a low energy level and no car. I don't think I can even properly define the word "exciting" anymore.

So what's been keeping me so busy that I couldn't even find time to blog? Damned if I know. The days just seemed to run away from me a bit. I've been doing some reading (real books! real ones! like with pages and stuff!), cleaning out closets (always a guaranteed good time), and trying to cook healthier meals for my two older children (my little one continues to eat only carbs and cheese, no matter what I try to prepare for her). I also spent some time with two friends, one whom I haven't seen in a few months, and one whom I haven't seen at all since college who called me and wanted to reconnect.

Meanwhile, my house has become Teenage Central. My overly generous sister bought my kids Rock Band for X-Box, and my walls are ringing with screechy, off-key versions of "Eye of the Tiger" and some song about wearing your pajamas all day. Facebook, instant messaging, and ringing cellphones are our constant companions. Acne has made itself at home here, despite the use of four different topical skin treatments. And Supermangirl (not yet 11 years old) announced suddenly last week "Hey Mommy, guess what? I have hair growing out of my armpits!" (what a proud day that was!)

Also, Wonderwoman is turning 13 in a few days (I coulda sworn that she's been 13 for years already). Because she's in 8th grade, I'm back in "looking for a high school" mode. Unfortunately, her grades are rather problematic (diplomatic parent-speak for "lousy") and I can't be completely sure that she's going to get accepted into her first choice. So we have chosen 4 different schools to apply to, none of which are in Brooklyn. For the next 4 consecutive Sunday mornings we will be attending those schools' Open Houses for prospective students. Whoo-hoo!

I hope that you guys have been busy with the kinds of exciting and important activities that seem to elude me. I'll be coming 'round your blogs to check up on you. Don't disappoint me now!

Sorry For The Silence

I apologize for the lack of posting.
All is well, I just haven't had much extra time lately.
I hope to be back soon!

Hebrew/English Talking Dolls

Look at these adorable dolls that I found:




David and Sarah are part of the "Language Littles" doll collection. I just bought the David Doll as a gift for my niece's new baby boy. When you squeeze the doll's hand, he says one of 25 pre-recorded phrases in Hebrew and English in the cutest little voice you've ever heard. (We couldn't stop ourselves. We kept squeezing his hand to hear him say "Hello/Shalom" and "I like to play with games/Ani ohev l'sachek b'mischakim".) Each doll is soft and cuddly and about 16" tall. They're great for teaching American kids how to speak Hebrew, and for teaching Israeli kids how to speak English.
They're a bit expensive, though. A number of online retailers sell them. The cheapest price that I could find was $32.50 at Tickatoo (use coupon code sale10 to get 10% off the price). I bought mine there, but I see that now they are out of stock. Instead, try Oytoys or Dolls Like Me, both of whom have it in stock for $36.95.

Reflections On Friends Who Lived To Tell

My friend Bonnie Samotin Zev has written a beautiful article for the Jewish Journal entitled Reflections on Friends Who Lived to Tell. Bonnie worked at the Shoah Foundation in Los Angeles for nearly ten years, and met hundreds of Holocaust survivors who allowed the organization to tape their testimonies for future generations. She tells us about a few of those treasured friends, and pays tribute to a special woman named Silvia Grohs-Martin, a former actress, singer, and dancer who had joined the Dutch Resistance, survived the concentration camps, and wrote a memoir about her experiences.

Please take a moment to read the article. If you'd like, you can leave comments for Bonnie here and I will forward them to her.

Self-Indulgent Acceptance Speech

Thank you so much to Prof K at Conversations in Klal for nominating me for a Kreative Blogger award! It means a lot to me coming from her. I am a bit in awe of how prolific she is. She presents well reasoned, well written, and thoughtful analysis about the issues facing our communities- and she does this every day, despite what sounds like a heavy teaching load and homemaking responsibilities. Also, she's a professor, which is very cool and slightly intimidating.

The problem is that the award comes with a lot of responsibility. I need to do lots of things with the number 7, like list 7 things that are interesting about me, nominate 7 other bloggers, link to each of them, notify each of them... good lord, I'm exhausted just thinking about it. (Even God found the number 7 to be exhausting. He worked for 6 days, but on that 7th day- well, he just crashed on the celestial sofa with a Diet Coke and a People magazine.)

So I'm going to break the rules. I'm going to hog all the glory (I won an award!!! I'm awesome!!!) and ignore all the responsibilities (kind of like, well, a man). Considering the fact that the name of the award is completely misspelled, I don't feel too guilty about going outside the box on this one.